my main rig has started giving me blue screens after it ran for over a year without a single hitch. we built it from scratch at the time. it first happened when I had been gaming for about an hour. I had actually just finished, and went to quit, and while the game was quitting the image froze for a second and then blue screen'd.
it has since happened at other times. like when I was just browsing the internet and/or playing music and using Photoshop. but it doesn't seem to happen unless the computer has been on for at least a few hours.
the blue screen itself says something about "memory management."
I've run the built-in Windows memory diagnostic but that yields nothing. it says everything is dandy. DXDiag says everything is working just fine. registry and hard drive scans show no errors. I also updated my display drivers, but now I don't know what else to try. trouble shooting is not my area of expertise.
upon restart from a blue screen, the computer tells me that it has dumped some files somewhere that contain all the information about what might have led to the crash. but I can't seem to find these, and even if I did it's not like I would know how to read them. I assume they contain a bunch of technical jargon and numbers that are useless to the layman.
all my important shit is backed up, so I could probably just wipe the machine and reinstall the OS as a last resort. but before trying something like that I would love to know if these BSOD's were related to a specific piece of hardware or software.
someone told me that it could be caused by a power supply unit that's going bad. and since he brought it up, it gives me pause because the PSU is actually the oldest component in the box. it was the one thing we transplanted from the computer before it. it's 550W which always seemed to run everything without issue. my GPU requires 450W and I don't know what other components really need that much power.
but if an aging PSU can cause such issues, well it's certainly getting old.
like I said, short of that I dunno what else to try.
it has since happened at other times. like when I was just browsing the internet and/or playing music and using Photoshop. but it doesn't seem to happen unless the computer has been on for at least a few hours.
the blue screen itself says something about "memory management."
I've run the built-in Windows memory diagnostic but that yields nothing. it says everything is dandy. DXDiag says everything is working just fine. registry and hard drive scans show no errors. I also updated my display drivers, but now I don't know what else to try. trouble shooting is not my area of expertise.
upon restart from a blue screen, the computer tells me that it has dumped some files somewhere that contain all the information about what might have led to the crash. but I can't seem to find these, and even if I did it's not like I would know how to read them. I assume they contain a bunch of technical jargon and numbers that are useless to the layman.
all my important shit is backed up, so I could probably just wipe the machine and reinstall the OS as a last resort. but before trying something like that I would love to know if these BSOD's were related to a specific piece of hardware or software.
someone told me that it could be caused by a power supply unit that's going bad. and since he brought it up, it gives me pause because the PSU is actually the oldest component in the box. it was the one thing we transplanted from the computer before it. it's 550W which always seemed to run everything without issue. my GPU requires 450W and I don't know what other components really need that much power.
but if an aging PSU can cause such issues, well it's certainly getting old.
like I said, short of that I dunno what else to try.
